Page 92 of Heart of Shadows
“Of course,” she agreed, trying to remain serious. Then, “Do you think the king would agree?”
He shrugged. “He might. He’s granted me other castles.”
“And who would you live here with?”
“My wife, of course.”
She nodded and moved to mount Archer. “Well, I hope you and she will be very happy, Highlander.”
He grasped her wrist and pulled her back into his arms. “We will be.” He dipped his mouth to hers and she didn’t stop him.
Later, she would—just to make him suffer. But not now. Now, she clutched fistfuls of his léine and reveled in his crushing embrace.
“Braya, you—”
“Speak naturally,” she insisted with feigned disgust. “If I must get used to that wonderfully melodic tone of yours, I might as well begin now.”
His full, sensual mouth slanted into a grin. “Verra well, wench. Ye are the only woman I have ever loved, or will ever love.”
She looked up at him and smiled, happier than she’d ever been before. “I do not know if I believe it. You will have to prove it to me.”
“I will spend the rest of my days doin’ so if ye will let me,” he promised. He kissed her and turned her blood to fire in a prelude of more to come. “And at night, I will take ye to Avalon.”
Nicholas stepped intohis son’s room and walked over to the tiny curtained bed. The babe was asleep. Nicholas didn’t want to wake him. He stared at his little face, perfect in its creation. His eyes scanned the boy’s pink cheeks and bump of a nose, his tuft of black hair.
She died bringing him here.
He strove to feel something other than grief and…anger, but nothing else came.
He would leave the babe for the nurses to raise while he traveled. He needed to get away from Lismoor, away from the ghost of his beloved Mattie. She was everywhere—in the kitchen even though they had a perfectly good cook, in the great hall laughing with the villagers, smiling at him in his bed.
He closed his eyes, hiding from his son—the life he would trade to have her back again.
“Forgive me,” he whispered and wiped his eye. “It seems I was not born for love.” He thought of the first person he had ever loved. His forbidden Julianna. He’d lost her first, and then when he finally snatched happiness for himself with Mattie, she was taken from him, too. He shook his head. No more.
“I must go.”
The babe stirred and something in him stirred with it. But his anger helped him to reject it. He turned away from his son, from Lismoor, from his life.
He needed to in order to survive. And after he’d lived in a world that wasn’t designed for his protection, whether slave or free, he would return and mend whatever else was broken.
But that’s another story.
The End
